The grade for the course will be composed of:
This course introduces basic concepts for modelling and implementing business processes using contemporary information technologies. We start by the introduction of Petri nets. Because of their simple, yet rigorously mathematical formulation, Petri nets are very suitable to unambiguously define typical workflow patterns, and to reason about important notions such as soundness and completeness of workflows. Then we will move our attention to more practical workflow modelling languages. We will study the academic language YAWL (Yet Another Workflow Language) and the industrial standard BPMN 2.0 (Business Process Model and Notation) in detail, and touch the main characteristics of BPeL (Business Process Execution Language) and EPCs (Event-driven Process Chains). The second part of the course then goes into the analysis, simulation, verification, and induction (process mining) of workflow models.
In the exercises the YAWL system will be used to enact YAWL models, and the free software BonitaSoft for BPMN modeling and enactment. Furthermore, during the course a “proof of technology” and a case study will be offered by affiliated partner IBM at their premises in Evere (Next to the NATO complex).